# evil

Pronunciation: US say "EE-vuhl" /ˈivəl/; UK say "EE-vil" /ˈiːvɪl/

## Adjective

1. Deeply wicked and immoral, especially wanting or meaning to cause harm to others.
   - Simple: Very bad and cruel, wanting to hurt others or do wrong.
   - _The novel's villain is genuinely evil, taking pleasure in the suffering of others._
   - _History records leaders so evil that their names became bywords for cruelty._
5. Unpleasant or foul, as of a smell, taste, mood, or the weather.
   - Simple: Very unpleasant or nasty, like a bad smell, taste, or mood.
   - _An evil stench rose from the stagnant water of the swamp._
   - _The sailors battled evil weather for the entire voyage._
4. Bringing about or warning of sorrow, harm, or disaster; unlucky or unfavorable.
   - Simple: Bringing or warning of bad luck, sadness, or harm.
   - _The settlers set out at an evil hour, just as the floods began to rise._
   - _An evil wind carried the sickness from one town to the next._
6. In computing, undesirable or harmful; representing bad practice to be avoided. *(slang)*
   - Simple: In computers, something that is bad practice and best avoided.
   - _Senior developers warned that the macro was evil, hiding control flow no one could follow._
   - _Relying on that shared global state is evil and will eventually corrupt your data._

## Noun

2. Moral badness; the wickedness or malevolent force that stands opposed to good.
   - Simple: Great wickedness, or the bad force thought of as the opposite of good.
   - _The film explores how ordinary people can be drawn toward evil._
   - _Philosophers have long debated the origins of evil in human nature._
3. Anything that causes suffering, harm, or injury, or that takes away a being's happiness or good.
   - Simple: Anything that causes pain, harm, or unhappiness to a living being.
   - _Disease and famine are among the worst evils that can befall a community._
   - _Reformers worked to abolish the social evil of child labor._

## Adjective

7. Harmful or injurious in nature, or bad and of no worth. *(obsolete)*
   - Simple: Harmful, or bad and worth nothing.

## Adverb

8. Badly: poorly, wickedly, or in a way that causes harm. *(obsolete)*
   - Simple: An old word meaning badly, wickedly or in a harmful way.

## Noun

9. A malady or disease, especially as the second element of a compound, as in king's evil or colt evil. *(obsolete)*
   - Simple: A disease or sickness, especially in old names like king's evil.

## Origin

**Meanings 1–7, 9** — From Middle English yvel, from Old English yfel, going back to Proto-Germanic *ubilaz, whose further source is disputed: one account links it to a Proto-Indo-European root meaning to 'treat badly'; another reads an ancestral form as 'going over or beyond acceptable limits'. It is cognate with Dutch euvel, German übel ('bad, evil'), and Gothic ubils ('bad, evil').
**Meaning 8** — The adverb came through Middle English yvel from Old English yfele ("badly, evilly"). The Old English form was made from the adjective yfel ("bad, evil"). Later, people often understood the adverb as a noun, for example in "to speak evil."

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/evil (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).